The Boys in the Band bears a unique distinction as a gay classic that many gays love to hate — whether or not they actually have seen the play onstage, or watched William Friedkin’s 1970 film adaptation.
Since its original, revolutionary 1968 Off-Broadway production, the play’s reputation as a comical but caustic representation of gay male lives and relationships has preceded it into any conversation about queer stigma, invisibility, and self-loathing.The group of gay men who gather in an Upper East Side Manhattan apartment to celebrate a birthday spend more time cutting each other down than cutting cake.
The party’s host Michael, birthday boy Harold, and their friends and frenemies are no jolly poster boys for queer affirmation.